PAINTED SETTEE

This painted settee represents a form of furniture decoration - later called fancy painted furniture - that became wildly popular in the United States at the turn of the nineteenth century, and remained popular through the 1850s.  Baltimore, Maryland, was a center for American painted furniture production during the early nineteenth century.  There, the most discriminating fancy furniture buyers could hire artists to paint unique compositions on their furniture.  While the settee in MESDA's collection has idealized landscapes and trophies of music, other known examples of painted furniture feature houses and landscapes associated with the patron who commissioned the painting.

John Barnhart, to whom the decoration of this settee is attributed, worked in Baltimore, Maryland from 1799 to 1822, where he advertised himself as a sign, herald, and chair painter.  The maker of the settee itself has not been identified.  A settee in the collection of the Baltimore Museum of Art is signed by both Barnhart and chair maker Thomas Renshaw (b. c. 1780).  Unfortunately, MESDA's settee is not signed, and differences in construction and form between the MESDA settee and the one at Baltimore Museum of Art argue against a Renshaw attribution.